By

Martin Schray

John Butcher is exclusive even within the very free universe of the improv scene.
Like no different, he’s each at dwelling in the world of European free jazz, which
is clear in his trio with bassist Wilbert DeJoode and drummer Martin Blume
(Low
Yellow, Jazzwerkstatt, 2018), and on the planet of sound exploration. For
the latter he chooses particular locations that act like a fellow musician for
his sonic excursions. This may be heard ideally on his album

Resonant Areas

(Confront, 2008), which presents Butcher enjoying units at obscure websites in
Scotland – together with an outdated army gas tank on the Orkneys with a
15-second echo, in addition to an deserted reservoir, a sea cave, and a
mausoleum. Butcher selected them for his or her particular, idiosyncratic acoustic
properties.

Thermal, in distinction to his solo efforts, is a trio with The Ex-guitarist
Andy Moor and Austrian analogue synthesizer wizard Thomas Lehn that has
existed since 2001. Butcher says that he enjoys their totally different backgrounds
(particularly Moor’s). For him the band doesn’t got down to play “improvised
music“, though they’re improvising. He says that the musicians
“assemble the music towards a background the place they have alternative ways of
listening to (or contextualising) what they’re truly doing“. The result’s
that the three complement one another fairly exquisitely, which could be heard
finest on “Autumn Fireflies“, the second and longest observe on

Ice in a Sizzling World. The piece is split into a number of elements, initially Lehn’s
synthesizer bleeps by the room as if he was misplaced in thought, whereas
Moor works the corpus of his guitar and seems like a gloomy bell. Butcher
contributes click on sounds very sparingly. Half two is a solo by Moor, atonal
however ethereal, as if he was listening intensely into the depths of his
instrument. After 5:20 minutes there’s a break and Butcher takes over,
additionally for a solo. Structurally, one can positively detect a closeness to Evan
Parker, the free-jazz-Butcher exhibits off in all his magnificence for 2 minutes.
It appears that evidently the sounds are thrown again on the musicians in lengthy echoes.
Truly nevertheless, the room isn’t particularly reverberant – however Lehn’s synth
has a built-in mechanical spring echo which makes the music sound extra
reverberant total. Right here, it’s a feast for the sonic explorers within the
musicians. Additonally, what looks as if an incoherent jigsaw first, flows
collectively very delicately and cautiously ultimately. All the things is relaxed
but additionally very intense, concentrated and targeted. The additional the piece
progresses, the extra condensed the sounds grow to be, the tempo is elevated,
and it will get obvious how a lot the three musicians are additionally at dwelling in
improvised music. It appears your ear is in a beehive. And on the finish,
the music gently floats out. Even formally it’s a wonderfully rounded observe –
evidently it follows a song-like construction, in all probability “as a result of Andy’s
strategy“, as Butcher suggests.

Ice in a Sizzling Worldis a really lovely album, it exhibits actual masters
at work. Listeners who like to find small, high quality particulars, can’t go
mistaken right here.

Thermal’s Ice in a Sizzling World is out there as a CD and as a
obtain.